Q & A with Natasha Clarita
August 19, 2018
Why Do You Volunteer for CISV?
August 29, 2018
Successful Partnerships: An interview with momondo’s Global Partnership & Brand Activation Director, Allan Askov Christoffersen
Gosia Jaroń: Hello Alan! Thank you for taking a moment to discuss this partnership between CISV and momondo. I would like to start off by asking what drove you to partner up with CISV?
Allan Christoffersen: The reason we had an eye on CISV was that our head of PR is a former CISVer. Our head of campaigns has two girls that have been to CISV camps and her husband has been in CISV, too. So that was our introduction to CISV. I talked a lot about our mission to open up the world, showing that there’s more uniting us than dividing us, and we wanted to team up with an organization that could give us that authenticity and credibility. So we were pointed to CISV’s mission, vision, and values, and the fact that you have been doing this for 70 years. So we thought that this is definitely something we should look into. We reached out to Denise Farrar, CISV’s Communications and Fundraising Manager, and we showed her our DNA video. The video shows how people around the world are connected through DNA so Denise could see that we have our heart in the right place!
GJ: What do you think drives business organizations to partner up with NGOs? They could work with another business, but instead they decide to collaborate with an NGO. Why?
AC: I see a trend which has been going on for the past 5 or 6 years about purpose marketing. It comes down to the fact that a lot of consumers, especially the younger ones, are looking at what a brand stands for. They want the brand to be something more than a nice soda, nice toothbrush, or nice insurance. And so, brands are trying to find something that is bigger than their product or their company. They are looking for something that lets them connect and engage on both emotional and psychological scale with these audiences.
GJ: And when you want to partner up with an organization, what do you look for?
AC: Well, the very first thing is checking if we share the same values. Do we share the same purpose? Which audiences does this organization reach? And then finally, I check if it’s possible to create a project together where we can push the purpose message forward. The example with CISV is the ‘Dear Mom and Dad’ video. It was shot during a village in Sao Paulo and for me, for momondo, it’s a perfect way to show what this partnership is about. When the audience sees the video, they understand why CISV and momondo are working together.
GJ: As for CISV, what piece of advice would you give us in terms of what we should be looking for in our potential partners?
AC: I think it’s really important that CISV figures out what are its objectives for the partnership. What is it that you will try to achieve. I understand from being here at the Global Conference that there is a goal to double CISV’s reach. So first of all, if I was in CISV, and I was looking into new partnerships, I would consider if we share the same values and purpose with the potential organizations. I would then ask myself: ‘Who can help us spread the message about CISV? In what ways could that be done? Is it through creating new videos? Is it that the potential partner has a huge audience?’. And what’s also important is something that Marc Kielburger said yesterday at his session: ‘Start with the end in mind’. What is it that you truly want to accomplish, and start from there!
GJ: And do you think that in today’s “era” videos are the right format to use to promote NGOs? What do you think should be the channels or platforms when we want to promote our organization?
AC: What we see on social media in general is that the videos perform much better than texts or photos, and so from that point of view I would probably think going into videos makes a lot of sense. But I also don’t see anything wrong with mixing it up with these three formats. We definitely see videos getting a lot of interaction if they emotionally touch people, and so it is probably an effective way to promote something you care about.
GJ: Alright, these insights are perfect. Thank you so much for talking to me. It was a pleasure to meet you!
AC: Thank you!
